Hand Made Gunstock

[Erik_in_Hoyt]

Locust will lose the yellow color fairly quickly unless you finish it with spar varnish or some other finish with a lot of UV inhibitors.
Mulberry also has a gorgeous yellow heartwood, with a fairly straight grain
Hedge/Osage Orange/Bois D'Arc is almost orange - and very twisty grained - but REAL hard on hand tools.
Hickory, Beech, and Elm are all 3 nice woods to work with.
Ash is another HARD wood with some nice grain structure.
Sycamore is a softer wood, so will dent easy, but has green and black woven in with the white heartwood.

have fun and post plenty of pictures!

 

[czechsonofagun]

Few years ago my son wanted a toy rifle for Christmas. I always prefer the real thing - digging through my magpie pile I found old barrel from 12 gauge shotgun and used that. The stock I copied from CZ made air rifle, but the only piece big enough for the stock was a chunk of cedar. I only have pictures of the stock, but here it is.

 

[LD1]

Nice work with the cedar.

I really like the color of cedar but around here, the only way to get it is to go to the store and buy it and that gets expensive. I wanted to start with a 3' log and go from scratch.

My only other concern with cedar is (correct me if I am wrong) it isn't a very hard wood.

 

[czechsonofagun]

You are absolutely right. Cedar is very soft. Pretty to look at, but for rifle stock the toy gun is about all I would use it for.
I get cedar by chain saw milling fallen cedar trees, not from a store.

 

[2manyrocks]

I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of too many people making stocks entirely by hand these days. Not too many folks will even take on the challenge using power tools.

My suggestion would be to make sure the wood is coated with poly in the wood to metal contact areas areas.

 

[LD1]

It's deffinatally coated heavy. 2 spray cans of minwax poly. About 5 coats per can. Wet sanded after the first can was gone and then again before the final 2 coats.

All told I have about 30hrs in it. If I had a mill, It probabally would only have taken a day to make and another couple to coat, with the waiting in between coats.

 

[2manyrocks]

Since you posted pictures of the finished stock, maybe not everybody has a sense of the level of craftsmanship required to make a stock. Here's a link to making a stock step by step so folks can get an idea of the craftsmanship that it takes to make a stock.

Complete Stock build instructions and pics - RimfireCentral.com Forums

 

[LD1]

Since you posted pictures of the finished stock, maybe not everybody has a sense of the level of craftsmanship required to make a stock. Here's a link to making a stock step by step so folks can get an idea of the craftsmanship that it takes to make a stock.

Complete Stock build instructions and pics - RimfireCentral.com Forums

Wow that was a cool link. Thanks for finding that.

He obviously did a much more precise job than me as I dont really have any wood working power tools other than a table and miter saw. It would also have been nice to start with square boards, instead of a log that I roughed out with a chainsaw. But I wanted a solid peice.

My only regret is that I didn't take more pics until i was done.

 

[czechsonofagun]

Since you posted pictures of the finished stock, maybe not everybody has a sense of the level of craftsmanship required to make a stock. Here's a link to making a stock step by step so folks can get an idea of the craftsmanship that it takes to make a stock.

Complete Stock build instructions and pics - RimfireCentral.com Forums

Thats a great link, thank you very much! And exactly what I plan to do for my SMLE - slight advantage is the stock in two pieces. On the other hand I will have to drill hole for the 7/16"-14 bolt. Can't wait to clean up all those damned jeep parts out of the shop and start reloading and working on guns again.

 

[2manyrocks]

Stock making is still an art.